Catch Up

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Gosh, I suck at posting. But I’m on a plane right now and reading Maureen Lipinski’s Not Ready for Mom Jeans (hilarious novel about a blogger who just became a new mom… reminds me of Jenn Lancaster‘s style), and her blogging has inspired me to get back on the horn. Get ready for the rundown!

So the short version of the past week… worked my butt off in Chicago on a new project, worked my belly off at the gyms in Chicago as part of our firm’s fitness challenge (first day: 1.5 hours of elliptical, 30 minutes of strength training. Beat that, suckers!), and worked on putting all the Caribbean-trip-coming-up weight back on while in Minnesota for the weekend. Oops.

So let’s start with that last one. I spent this weekend visiting New Boy (not New Boyfriend just yet) in Minnesota, and I swear that all I did while there was eat. My cultural note from the weekend: it seems to me that all the Minnesota girls are blonde and cute and teeny tiny. How do they stay that way when faced with deep fried cheese curds and Dairy Queen Blizzards and fried donuts and all kinds of other goodies all the time? I know for a fact that they eat them, because it was their peer pressure and willingness to chow down that led me to cave (but boy, was I glad that I did – mmm). It wasn’t like New York where the girls eat salads (or big gusts of wind) all day long. How on earth do they eat like that and still stay in perfect shape? I wish I had a metabolism like that.

Speaking of metabolism, New Boy is doing his master’s research project on metabolism and childhood obesity. On Friday, I went with him to visit a physical therapist who used this new technology called BIA to check our metabolisms (and a whole host of other data points as well). Here’s what floored me: New Boy is 6’1″, so his basal metabolic rate (meaning what he would burn if he just laid in bed all day and didn’t move) is 2100 calories. Insane! So as an active guy, he prob burns like 3000 calories a day (or more). I, on the other hand, have a BMR of 1310 calories, and I sit at a desk for 12-14 hours a day… meaning not much more calorie burn coming out of that :( Darn consulting. I talked to the doctor for a while about my lifestyle, and he said it sounds like I’m doing everything right (at least as far as getting to the gym daily and trying to eat healthy wherever possible), but warned me that the consulting lifestyle of eating out three meals/day may not be sustainable in the long run. I really like my job, and hadn’t thought of the diet as being more than an annoyance that would lead to an extra few pounds that only bother me for my vanity, but he told me that in the future, I might need to make a choice between my career and my health. Scary!

The rest of the weekend was fun, though. On Saturday, we went out on a pontoon boat on the LaCroix River. I chowed down on chips and dip and WAY too much Leinenkugel Summer Shandy beer, but at least I had made the dips (pineapple salsa and Hungry Girl’s Sweet Caramelized Onion Dip) myself back at New Boy’s house, so they were fairly healthy and unprocessed. Saturday night we went to a festival in Stillwater, MN called “Lumberjack Days,” and I enjoyed myself playing a drinking game called “Hammerschlagen”, where you take turns trying to hit nails into a tree stump with the pointy end of a hammer. Hilariously redneck and fun :) However, after all the partying, we only got about 2 hours of sleep, so we opted to skip tubing down the Apple River the next day in favor of resting up. Sunday night, we saw Jack Johnson play at River’s Edge in Wisconsin, which I thoroughly enjoyed. My favorite parts were the fried cheese curds, the Hefeweizen beer, the freshly fried donuts with brown sugar… oh, and I guess the music was good too :)

Yesterday I worked hard most of the day, then hit up the outlets at night, and picked up a SUPER cute bathing suit from Banana Republic for my trip to Punta Cana. I seriously love the Banana Republic outlets – I always get amazing deals there! Yesterday’s find was this magenta and orange plaid bikini for only $8 a piece, which will hopefully look fantastic with my upcoming tan. It will look even more fantastic if I can stick with my plan to work out hardcore every morning at the resort… I have a lot to make up for.

But speaking of some pictures that I DO think I look good in… my ad campaign has launched in full, and I’ve been getting tons of e-mails and messages from people spotting my ads on the subway, on planes, on billboards, and on Hulu. How cool! The irony of it all is that I still haven’t seen the ads yet. I’m on my way back to NYC right now, but will only be there for about 10 hours, and probably won’t be riding the subway at all… which means another week before I can see the ads for myself. Which also means more time for people to draw mustaches on me and write dirty comments all over. I hope the mustaches don’t ruin my plan to ride the subway all day long and sit under my ads and see if anyone recognizes me… :) P.S. If anyone is in NYC and sees my ad (or is somewhere else and sees it there), do me a favor and take a pic and post it on my Facebook fan page? I want to see as many shots of the ads as possible! Though what I really want to check out is if the Punta Cana airport has any of my ads up. JetBlue flies there, so there is a good chance! How cool would that be if my ad is up in a foreign country? Pictures definitely will be forthcoming, if so.

They haven’t made the announcements yet, but I’m an experienced enough flier to feel that this plane is turning in for a landing. Talk to you all soon!

I love that you think we’re all blonde, tiny, and in shape. I can certainly tell you this isn’t true… it’s true for a lot of the people who head outdoors (the ones you see), otherwise all those who don’t fit the aforementioned criteria simply hermit inside — which seems to be most. :P